Clean Tech Recession: Winners And Losers

Green energy is still a lightning-fast growth area in venture capital—VC investment in green energy technologies in 2008 exceeded $7.7 billion in more than 350 deals, more than double last year’s dollar totals, according to GreenTechMedia.com. But the recession, and the accompanying plunge in the price of oil, are motivating a different type of thinking in clean tech. As a result, says the New York Times, "big, expensive projects like building factories to manufacture solar panels or biofuels are falling out of favor."

Why emulate the old, capital-intensive ways of creating energy, anyway? It's time to move from the mainframe model of big power plants to the equivalent of networked PCs and wireless mobile devices.

Clean Tech 2.0 is going to be smaller, more distributed, and more personalized than the previous solutions. It's going to take the biggest possible advantage of "negawatts," or extra capacity freed up by maximum efficiency. Information technology will allow us to optimize our use of energy and resources so nothing goes to waste. Financing will be shaped to government incentives. So, who are the winners in the negawatt revolution, and who are the losers?